It’s my second day in my thirties, and my back’s killing me.  I know, I’m old.  But I have a good reason.

Last night was the party to celebrate my 30th birthday, and we did it in style. With the things we love. Movies (well, a movie theater), Rock Band, and pizza. Oh, and friends and family were in attendance, as well.

As any big event in our lives, the wife and I like to do something big. So we (read: she) rented a private screening room at Coolidge Corner Theater.  Seating for 45, and a huge screen.

We packed up our XBox 360, Rock Band 2, The Beatles: Rock Band, our plastic instruments and headed to the theater around 6:30 to set up.  My back’s killing me is because I lugged a ton of that stuff a whole buttload of blocks since we had to park farther away than we should have.

Anyway, aside from back hurting, I feel pretty good today.  We had an awesome time last night.  A bunch of people from work, and past jobs, and family showed up to celebrate.  We played Rock Band for a whole bunch of hours, and people that had never gotten to play before got to play. And from the talk this morning, they enjoyed it.  It really is a game that everyone likes.  It’s impossible to not like the game, really. I challenge you!

Getting older is a weird thing.  Obviously I know I’ve turned 30, but I don’t feel any different. I honestly don’t think I’ve noticed my age at all since I turned 18. I don’t feel any older, I just feel like.  Obviously I can’t do all the things I used to be able to do, physically, but it’s not like I’m in a wheel chair or anything, so that’s good.

So far, 30 hasn’t been at all bad.  I rung in my new year with friends, family and gaming. What more could I want?  It was a great night.

Mac Pro day is rapidly approaching.  I was going to get it yesterday, but waited.  I asked for Apple gift cards for my birthday, so I wanted to wait till I got those, so I didn’t spend any extra money when I could have used gift cards.  So Mac Pro day has been pushed back to (I believe) October 9th, which should be enough time to allow for getting paid for the month of September, and the check clearing.  I’m super psyched, and will post before and after photos once I have everything set up.

Big thanks to everyone who came last night and celebrated, and for all the generous gifts everyone gave.  We’re definitely going to rent the theater again in the near future, and host another Rock Band night, since it was such a hit.  Next time we won’t use Facebook to invite people though, since that seems to be uber-ineffecient.

So, we carved out 5 hours of our Labor Day weekend to play the Endless Setlist for Rock Band.

What’s the endless setlist, you ask?   58 songs in a row.   I guessed it would take us about 6 hours to complete.   Luckily, it only took 4 hours 45 minutes.   I thought I was going to die.

It rocked though, we 5 starred 55 of the 58 songs, which was an accomplishment. Christine 100%’d 25 songs, which was kickass.

I was pretty pissed though, at the end.   There’s an accomplishment for XBox260 that’s “Platnium Artist”, which you get when you finish the Endless Setlist on Expert, which I did.   I didn’t get the award.   Apparently, you only get the award of the person playing the lowest difficulty in your band.   Since Christine was playing on Medium, I only got the medium award, which angered me.

Since Christine now works at Harmonix (starting on Monday), she’s going to have fix it, and give me my damned award!   Or, I could go back and carve out another 5 hours of my time, and do it again.   Or could i?

Wow, the wedding snuck up quickly. It’s only nine days away now. Luckily everything’s done, except for the last meeting with the reception place to give them the remainder of the payment. Not fun, but no big deal.

Lots has happened since my last (barely) update. Let’s see, where to start:

• Work is almost complete on our newest website, TVSnobs.net (sister site to MovieSnobs.net)
• Starting to re-code all of the stuff I’d written for ToursOfSalem.com to update it to more of the stuff I know about now.
• Began working on a website (and almost completed) for Kathy Diamant’s Personal Assistant services
• Just about done re-doing a website for a friend’s brother’s dry cleaning business out in western Massachusetts.

Lots going on at my day job, too. Our merger with another company is about 80% done with the hard part, which is good. The stress is certainly starting to show itself, though. You can tell the office is different now. Hopefully it’ll go back to normal post-merger. I personally can’t wait for vacation.

Speaking of vacation, I just got off the phone with the Wynn, our reservation is confirmed and we’re ready to go. I can’t wait, I’m going to take a ton of pictures out there this time. Hopefully we can get in on a Grand Canyon tour that we’re looking at, and take a zillion photos there. I’m glad we’ve got a digital camera, I can’t believe it took me so long to buy one.

Oh, other things that we bought, lots! We got our new TV delivered last week, it’s awesome. 40″ Sony Bravia LCD, has the greatest picture ever. So, now that we had a 1080P TV, we had to go buy a Blu-Ray player, since it “won the war”. We already had an HD DVD player, courtesy of Christine’s aunt and uncle, but we decided to splurge and get the Blu-Ray. Instead of buying the regular player, we got the PlayStation 3, which is pretty bad-ass. It’s not as impressive as the XBox 360, but it’s still pretty cool. Blu-Ray looks amazing on the new TV. So does the XBox, for that matter. Halo and Rock Band in 1080P is pretty impressive.

Got all that new stuff just in time for the video game afternoon that will be my bachelor party, with Christine’s younger brothers. Should be a good time, week from tomorrow. Can’t wait!

I think that’s all, for now. More updates coming once life has stabalized, or I have more to say.